One of the youngest CITI-SENSE members, Johanna Robinson from Ljubljana, won the competition for the best poster presentation at the Healthy Buildings Europe 2015 conference. The event took place 18-20.05.2015 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Together with other project members that are involved in the CITI-SENSE school case studies Johanna prepared a paper, entitled “Empowering students to improve their indoor school environment with the help of low-cost air quality sensors – CITI-SENSE project”. The paper is describing the pilot studies and their findings. Congratulations!

School students participating in CITI-SENSE air quality research won a certificate of excellence in a regional research-fair in Haifa, Israel.
The fair took place on 05 May at the National Science Museum in Haifa, Israel. It presented 93 works of students, including two research works conducted as part of CITI-SENSE’s collaboration with schools in the district and the “youth to adulthood” team. The first work by “Israelia” school students examined the difference in air quality between a classroom and the teachers’ room in the school. The second work, by students from “Tel Chai” school, examined differences in air quality between the school yard and the classroom. In both cases the students found that the air quality in the classroom was better than the air quality in the compared location. The students presented the rational for the research with great confidence and their hypothesis, methods, findings and conclusions left a strong and positive impression. The grand finale for the wonderful fair was the announcement at the end of the day that the group of students from “Tel-Chai” school has won a certificate of excellence for their work on this relevant and important topic. Congratulations!

On Saturday April 4, students from Vič high school in Ljubljana, Slovenia organized a street event in their hometown. For this occasion, business cards containing information about CITI-SENSE have been designed and homemade cookies decorated with buzz words related to air quality. Both were distributed to pedestrians in the city. To attract awareness, balloons were decorated with slogans and local contact information.

The students divided into pairs and walked around the old town of Ljubljana, talking to people, informing them about air quality in Ljubljana, and distributing information cards, cookies and balloons. The day was a success-both in terms of awareness raising and learning. Many citizens have been approached and informed about air quality and CITI-SENSE. Facebook posts about this event reached over 1000 people. But also the high school students themselves are now much more aware of issues related to air quality.

Thursday, 09 April, a CITI-SENSE Student Conference has been held in Lørenskog, Norway. Classes from three senior high schools in the greater Oslo area presented results of different indoor air quality projects by means of a poster exhibition. The highlight was a poster competition where both a professional jury and the students themselves could nominate their favourites.

The Conference was a highlight, marking the end of a four weeks period on indoor air quality activities. By help of air quality measuring devices, the students could work on practical research questions related to indoor air quality in their schools. This initiative raised awareness amongst the students and empowered them to deal with indoor air quality issues in their every day life.

At the Citizens’ Observatories conference in Brussels on 04 December, CITI-SENSE could demonstrate the interplay between sensors and mobile phones in the CITI-SENSE case studies.
The mobile sensors will take measurements and send the data to the CITI-SENSE server. Both, the CITI-SENSE web portals and mobile application can access the data from the server and use them for their services. The web portals will mainly display data from static sensors. The mobile application will provide information about personal data from the mobile sensors or mobile connected sensors. They can be combined with data from static sensors for a better understanding of the data and the personal effects of the environment.
The usage of mobile applications also provides a good basis for more citizen engagement by offering functionalities for feedback and personal perception of the surrounding environment.